President Obama has embarked on a new effort to address the economic concerns of struggling families. But some of his ideas may only stoke the fires of a smoldering debate about the choices parents make to care for their children.
One look at his proposals on federally subsidized child care shows how. Over the last 40 years, liberals in Congress have advanced ever-expanding policies that disproportionately favor child care outside of the home. In a debate sometimes referred to as the “mommy wars,” these ideas have pitted families of similar income against one another in a competition for federal dollars and tax relief.
The first “big idea” was the Comprehensive Child Development Bill of 1971. This legislation would have created what one commentator has called “a New Deal for children”: a massive, multibillion-dollar federal program to establish government-run day care centers for very young children. President Nixon vetoed the bill.
Then, in 1988, Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Dale Kildee introduced the Act for Better Child Care, dubbed the “ABC” bill. This $12 billion program proposed a system of grants to the states to underwrite out-of-home care for lower- and even middle-income Americans. A watered-down version of the ABC bill became law in 1990. The Mommy Wars continued in the background, but in recent years a relative truce has held.
Now, President Obama proposes to add $1.6 billion to the federal child care block grant, funds that flow to out-of- home care for children. Second, he proposes to double the value of one particular tax provision, the Child and Dependent Care Credit, which not only steers funds to out-of-home care but also discriminates among working families where both mother and father are in the work force.
In today’s tough economy, most couples have two wage-earners. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, last year nearly 60 percent of married couples with children under 18 said they were in dual- earner marriages. But this doesn’t mean that these couples are using, or would prefer to use, out-of-home institutional day care.
Many couples choose to order their working lives so that either Mom or Dad is with the children during the day. They do this by working a combination of full- and part-time jobs, by working split-shifts, or by one parent working on the weekend while the other follows a regular work week. These parents are both maximizing their time at home with their children while avoiding the pitfalls of very expensive and sometimes not very high-quality day care.
Obama’s proposals represent more tilting of the tables in favor of only one set of family decisions about child care. At the maximum, his proposed expansion of the Child and Dependent Care Credit would put $900 into the pockets of families that purchase institutional day care while offering nothing to couples that sacrifice time with each other, or added income, to raise their own children.
Charles A. Donovan is senior research fellow in domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation.
